You are being short sighted. It's not about lowest at the expense of your country. With Wal Mart's massive economies of scale, goods in America can be produced cheaply with massive factory orders. Regarding Chinese quality, well what product group are you talking about? Pencils, microprocessors, cars, shampoo? We've given away the farm with their currency manipulation and have enabled our own deficit spending because they buy huge chunks of our debt. It's bad business for America to do these things for low prices, because the scenario I point out weakens our country, and is not fiscally sustainable in the long run. It's much like the Latin bumrush across our borders. Personally, I can remember paying 200.00 for my first DVD player at Costco. Now 30.00 buys one made in China. Every room in my house that has a TV has a DVD player. Do I need them? No. Does it raise my standard of living? I would argue no. I would rather pay 99.00 for one American made player built by Americans. There would be less trade deficit, less foreign influence from our debt purchase, and more national strength through manufacturing infrastructure. Our country would be more self sufficient and could not easily be held hostage by any country or group like OPEC. This was the scenario we had during the cold war. China owns us business wise, and we rely on them too much for manufacturing sourcing. One day they're going to face us down when we object to their military ambitions. Will we have the sway to make our position stick when they produce most of our everyday goods? That's the true cost of your cheap Chinese products we take for granted today, much like OPEC and terrorism, our dollars our slowly funding a problematic rival at the expense of our autonomy and way of life.